Wild Rose
by M1zushim1zushi: turns out i skipped this chapter….
Bai Ling gradually calmed down from his memories.
Looking back now, the fact that he and Mr. D had remained only formal acquaintances for twenty years wasn’t just a cruel twist of fate.
Adult relationships involve many factors. Social ties, class, money… even face-to-face interactions have their reservations, let alone two strangers separated by a network cable.
He knew nothing of Mr. D’s private life, and Mr. D knew very little of his.
He even lied to Mr. D, saying he worked on “explosive demolition” at the border of a desolate planet.
It wasn’t a malicious lie; he simply knew that getting involved with someone like him would never end well. In those years, his wanted poster sat at the top of every bounty list. The Tyrant denounced him in fits of rage, the evening news had a dedicated column for him, and spies had stripped his history bare.
If the authorities discovered he was close to Mr. D, secret police would have kicked down Mr. D’s door that very night to torture him.
Furthermore, he couldn’t offer a long-term commitment to the other party.
The battlefield changed in an instant; a temporary victory meant nothing, it was either you or me tomorrow.
After over a decade of stalemate, everyone was exhausted. Some fled, some committed suicide. Bai Ling was lucky just to survive long enough to be kicked out of leadership due to injuries.
Of course, being sidelined through a calculated power struggle and forced to hand over the team he built with his own hands left him with unavoidable resentment.
Yet, at the beginning of his “retirement,” Bai Ling remained optimistic.
Since I’m here, I might as well make the best of it.
Maybe returning to the Capital Planet under a pseudonym would lead to a new beginning. He couldn’t afford to buy a house, but he could rent a small room. He couldn’t find a job, but he could work odd jobs with Rattlesnake. His goal was clear and planned:
Save enough money, buy a small tin cart, get a business license, and sell milk in the square.
Coming full circle, he had returned to the starting point.
Bai Ling would sometimes sigh at the irony; one of his original dreams when he first raised his army was to restore the milk delivery system after establishing a new regime.
Even though his career had collapsed halfway through, if he could set up a small stall himself, his life wouldn’t be in vain.
Even at the very end, he never gave up hope.
It was just as the merman often said to him: You’re always so reckless, and you’re always so dull to pain.
Bai Ling felt that was an instinct evolved from a life of oppression, one of the few treasures he gained from his previous life.
Charge straight, move forward, and never look back at the explosion.
Things will work themselves out; life always has a turning point.
Otherwise, fate wouldn’t have given him a second chance to restart over under the merman’s protection.
Regarding his death, however, Bai Ling still couldn’t remember any details.
He had a premonition that he didn’t die simply from illness. A villain like him, the “un-killable stinky bird” in General Sava’s words, the “cunning and cold-hearted scum” in the secret police’s mouths, would surely take a crowd down with him if he died.
Ideally, he would have crashed an aircraft into the Palace Tower and smashed the Tyrant to smithereens.
“I probably didn’t crash it…” Bai Ling muttered to himself, wrapped in the warm down duvet.
If he had crashed it…
Wouldn’t he have been the indirect murderer of the merman?!
Bai Ling’s pupils shrank. He suddenly scrambled up as all his melancholy vanished.
He jumped from the bedside and pulled back the curtains. The noon sun spilled across his face. He squinted for a moment to adjust, then looked again to find that outside this wall wasn’t a tower floating in the clouds, but a lush, green conservatory.
The merman had placed his master bedroom right next to the flower room.
Clumps of blooming jasmine were elegantly dotted beneath the windowsill.
Bai Ling climbed out the window, his bare foot and prosthetic stepping onto the lawn. The freshly trimmed tender grass felt itchy against his foot; the soil on the slope was moist, clearly just watered.
No bird would dislike such an environment.
Nor would they refuse to chirp for the master of the greenhouse.
Yu Chen was holding a hose, watering the newly opened tulips. He heard a light breeze, followed by a surge of warmth at his back as a flexible body pressed against him.
Yu Chen stood firm, raising his left hand to rub the fuzzy head leaning on his shoulder.
“Awake? After you eat, do you want to sleep a little more?”
Bai Ling nipped at his collar with his teeth, gnawing lightly at the man’s shoulder and neck. He said with a muffled, nasal tone:
“No more sleep. I can’t let you give me bad habits.”
Yu Chen turned his head, raising an eyebrow. “What bad habits?”
“Staying in bed. Staying in your bed.”
Yu Chen couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s just staying in bed. Even wetting the bed wouldn’t be a big deal.”
Bai Ling: “?”
Yu Chen pinched his cheek. “After all, birds are straightforward and so is my little bird.”
To the outside world, he was cold and sharp; to Yu Chen, he was direct and warm, unable to hide any emotion.
This teasing made Bai Ling feel a bit guilty.
He had harbored feelings for Mr. D in his past life, yet in this life, he had unhesitatingly hooked up with Yu Chen.
It felt a bit like being fickle.
Bai Ling tightened his grip on the merman’s waist, pressing his cheek against the broad shoulder, and slowly said:
“I actually have something I want to confess to you…”
Yu Chen turned off the hose and listened intently.
Bai Ling found it hard to speak, gritting his teeth before blurting it out: “I have some unfinished business with my former guardian. I want to go find him and settle things clearly. Is that okay?”
It was a question. It meant Yu Chen could say yes, or he could refuse.
Yu Chen pondered for a moment before saying, “Actually, I’m not that generous of an alpha.”
The bird claws wrapped around his waist spasmed. Then, they quickly smoothed down his abdominal muscles, as if smoothing his scales.
“If you hadn’t told me and had secretly run off to find them, I would definitely be angry. But since you’re telling me now,” Yu Chen switched to a lighter tone, “it means you care more about your current guardian’s feelings. In that case, I have no reason to refuse.”
As he spoke, he caught the bird’s hand and openly tucked it into his own shirt, as if teaching the child how to get what he wanted.
Bai Ling suspiciously stared at him. “Really not going to guard your food?”
“I’ll try my best not to.”
Bai Ling pursed his lips. “Then I’ll try my best to feed you well before I go.”
Yu Chen was intrigued. “How do you plan to feed me?”
Bai Ling asked frankly, “How do you want to eat?”
Yu Chen habitually moved to wrap his arm around the young man’s waist, his palm sliding down to the edge of the shirt, beneath the underwear… actually, there was none?
Bai Ling’s hips and waist jolted as he received a light, firm swat on the ass and his mind momentarily went blank.
Yu Chen addressed him with a perfectly serious face: “Go. Put on some pajama pants before you come back.”
Bai Ling walked away, muttering curses under his breath.
What kind of alpha spends every day wishing their omega would put on more clothes?
Old man. Hypocrite.
Despite the grumbling, he obediently pulled on a pair of long trousers. When he returned, he saw the old man leaning over and pulling weeds.
Bai Ling couldn’t distinguish between these thin-leafed plants; to him, they all looked the same. “What are these?”
Yu Chen traced the veins of the leaves, introducing them one by one: “These are daffodils, these are Christmas cacti, these are clematis, and these are leeks—”
Bai Ling thought he had misheard. “What were those last ones?”
Yu Chen: “Leeks. One of the ingredients in the meat pies you ate the day before yesterday.”
Bai Ling watched expressionlessly as Yu Chen’s hand rose and fell, neatly harvesting the leeks with a strange sense of déjà vu.
…Oh, right. Back in the day, when Izu Paraiso sent disobedient alphas to the artificial moon to plant potatoes, that’s exactly how he did it.
—A merman’s traditional specialty.
Yu Chen flicked the dewdrops off the leaves and handed the whole bunch to him. Bai Ling carried the leeks away, intending to store them in the fridge.
On his way past a cluster of tulips, he ran into the small robot. It emerged from a hidden crossroad. When Bai Ling plucked a stray leaf off its head, two hearts immediately popped up on its screen.
AI: “Thank you, Little Mechanical Bird!”
Bai Ling smiled. Glancing in the direction it had come from, he asked casually, “Is there something over there too?”
“Yes! If you follow this little path further in, you’ll find the Master’s plant nursery. Behind that is his workshop. When the Master’s eyes were better, he used to do handicrafts there.”
Bai Ling was secretly stunned. This place was truly larger than he had imagined, with unexplored areas popping up constantly.
The robot seemed to read his thoughts and said enthusiastically, “I can take you over there for a look.”
It never missed a chance to help the Little Mechanical Bird learn more about its Master.
I really am a powerful and responsible AI, the AI thought, moving itself to tears.
Passing through a pebble path lined with trees, a pure white roof came into view. Given that the flower greenhouse was at least four or five stories high, this plant nursery seemed relatively petite.
The robot brought Bai Ling to peer through the window. “Inside are rare and endangered plants still in the sprouting stage, so they’re kept in a constant temperature and humidity room.”
“For example, that pot there is the Master’s heart and soul: the Wild Rose.”
The robot pointed it out to him. The light inside the room was dim. Standing with the light at his back, Bai Ling could only see a few blurry flower buds. Yet, for some reason, he found himself staring in a daze.
Bai Ling turned and asked, “Yu Chen considers this flower a treasure?”
AI: “Of course! Master won’t even let me go in to touch the leaves. He says the flowers are delicate and my cold little hands would damage the veins of the petals. But Master is right; he’s grown this variety for so many years and has only successfully cultivated a few pots.”
Bai Ling breathed on the glass and wiped it, trying his best to see. “It looks like a normal flower… aren’t there roses outside the conservatory too?”
The robot shook its pincers with an air of profound wisdom. “Nope. Those colorful ‘roses’ are actually Chinese hibiscuses; flower shops often use them to impersonate roses.”
“Hibiscuses bloom almost every month, but wild roses only bloom once a year.”
“These roses have a deadly amount of thorns. So many that you can’t even wrap them into a bouquet. But compared to the hibiscuses grown in golden pots with high-filtered nutrient solutions, their scent is far more intoxicating. The Encyclopedia of Rosaceae says: ‘Damask hybrid roses, the thorny beauties of the desert.'”
Bai Ling asked, puzzled, “Damascus?”
The robot nodded. “That’s right. It belonged to an ancient Earth country called Syria. When the Master was stationed on a frontier planet in his youth, he bought this small bag of seeds from a smuggler. Come to think of it, all the plants in this conservatory are seedlings he brought back from various places.”
The Little Prince Merman. Every planet has its own flower.
A ripple stirred in Bai Ling’s heart. He couldn’t help but lean against the window to sniff, but the glass was too thick; he couldn’t catch the scent of the wild rose at all.
The robot offered a suggestion: “This rose’s blooming period is in the next couple of days. We can wait until the Master is asleep at midnight and sneak it out to look at it!”
“How about including me?” a voice materialized out of thin air.
AI: “Great! You’re on lookout duty, the Little Mechanical Bird and I will handle the—ACK!”
It let out a scream of glitched programming. Its cameras flew in every direction, carefully avoiding Yu Chen as he stepped out from behind some foliage.
Yu Chen: “Power down.”
AI: “…Understood.”
The robot stalled on the spot, and the Little Mechanical Bird was caught red-handed.
“Perhaps you’d like to see my workshop?” Yu Chen’s tone was long and drawn out, leaving no room for refusal.
Bai Ling followed the Merman through the lush shrubbery. Seeds had grown into trees; the Little Prince had become an Old Emperor. As a latecomer, he could enjoy the prosperity of this forest without any reservations.
Bai Ling quietly grabbed a lock of that thick, golden hair, smoothed one out, and wrapped it around his finger.
Yu Chen pushed open the workshop door. Bai Ling peered inside, and his eyes instantly lit up.
So many tools!
The shelves and walls were packed with exquisite molds, welding guns, measuring rulers, and raw materials. It was a dream toy room for adults.
“It just so happens I have something to give you as a return gift for the scrambled eggs,” Yu Chen said, fumbling in the back of a drawer.
Bai Ling knew the old man had an ulterior motive for bringing him here. His heart skipped with joy, but he maintained a cool exterior. “But you already treated me to milk. You can’t give me more gifts.”
Yu Chen laughed without hiding it. “Just think of it as an old scoundrel’s scheme. Besides, I’m already looking forward to the next gift from my little bird.”
His little bird was instantly convinced.
“Fine,” Bai Ling said, quietly curling his lips into a smile where the old blind man couldn’t see.
“It’s here…” Yu Chen muttered to himself, pulling out a simple small wooden box. He flipped the latch and lifted out a thin chain.
It was a necklace, threaded with a single pearl.
A pearl. Bai Ling’s heart beat like a drum. Hiding his nervousness as best as he could, he asked tentatively, “Whose pearl is this?”
Yu Chen tilted his head and thought for a moment. “My young self.”
Bai Ling had to bite his lip hard to keep from laughing.
Yu Chen unfastened the white gold chain and beckoned to him with his finger. Bai Ling hurriedly brought his neck over to the man’s hands, letting him carefully adjust the length, fastening it as a low-profile collarbone chain.
Bai Ling arched his neck to look down. The pearl wasn’t large, maybe 7mm, a “little pearl” in every sense of the word.
But its base color was a grayish-blue with a brilliant luster, like a sliver of clear moonlight resting on his collarbone.
Bai Ling whispered, “Why are you suddenly… giving me something so precious?”
He didn’t believe for a second it was just to pay him back for the fried dish.
Yu Chen habitually adjusted his collar. Once satisfied, he curled his lips into a smile. “You’re about to report to another alpha. I have to use ‘every means necessary’ to keep my little bird’s heart.”
The merman’s long finger tapped his nose, saying seriously:
“Wear my little pearl, and you can only fly back to eat at my house.”
“Haha, you’re so cute!” Bai Ling laughed, falling into his embrace.
Author’s Note:
Tsk tsk, some merfolk are truly tearing down their own crematorium brick by brick with their own hands, hahahaha.
Little Bird: Little Pearl Kill! From now on, I can raise mermen to get rich. I’ll do this and that, make the old guy cry, and I’ll bring a washbasin to catch the pearls.
Old Merman: No need for a basin. I have burlap sacks right here. What color sack does my baby like?
Little Bird: ?????
jjwxc comments:
Actually, this chapter gave me more of a feeling of peeking into the old merman’s world. These hobbies and refinements belong to Yu Chen himself, his personal charm stripped of his identity as a ruler. They also remind people of him during his princely days. Some related items have appeared before, like the muzzle corresponding to Xiao Yi’s ambition and perseverance, the milk truck corresponding to Xiao Yi’s compassion and desire for control. But the garden feels like Yu Chen’s inner world. He collects seeds, nurtures their growth with his own devotion, observes them, uses them. Like the plants, he grew from a seed into a towering tree, but the flourishing bloom and maturity belong to the plants, not to the merman who cultivates among them. He is the Little Prince of planet B612. He is also the rose within the prince’s glass dome. Finally, he sees the bird he has set his heart on, and can’t wait to open the glass dome, inviting him to fly into this abundant garden and build a nest. Watching this, I even want to become a leek in the garden, standing in the soil doing nothing, just watching him spend time in the garden, walking back and forth, rubber boots stepping through puddles from watering the soil, grabbing my newly grown leaves to cut [very self-aware]
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